Comment: Time to applaud growth of a game on the rise

Glasgow City have qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League for the second time in three years. Picture: SNS

GOOD news for ­everyone ­(except misogynistic ­fossils). Women’s football is ­growing – and this time it is ­unstoppable.

Glasgow City’s qualification in midweek for the last 16 of the Champions League – the second time in three years that they have reached that stage – is just one sign of the increasing quality of the women’s game in Scotland. But there are any number of indications, both here and further afield, that we are witnessing the start of a radical transformation of the whole sport that will end with women’s football being treated on an equal footing with men’s.

As the recent BBC Alba documentary Honeyballers showed, there were two previous periods in which the women’s game flourished: the late Victorian era, and then between the two World Wars. On both occasions, a brief expansion was followed by swift suppression: the male authorities were aghast at women playing “their” game, and they succeeded in practically outlawing their involvement.

There were several factors then which left women’s football open to such attacks, and they have all either disappeared or been rendered irrelevant. Attempts to establish national competitions were short-lived, for example; now, leagues are thriving.

Men’s clubs then were usually hostile or indifferent, with those few that were sympathetic being ordered by their national associations not to host women’s matches; now, many senior clubs have women’s teams. And the sexist attacks that passed almost without comment then – in England in 1921, for example, the Football Association declared that “the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and ought not to be encouraged” –now meet with a robust response.

In addition to the establishment of sporting and political organisations that back women’s football, the growth of social media has helped greatly. That, too, is an irreversible change, and Scottish Women In Sport, a new charity, is just the latest organisation to help publicise women’s football via Twitter.

But, clearly, there is a long way to go. As @scotwomensport tweeted yesterday, for every article in the sports media about women, there are 53 about men.

While long-established clubs such as Hibernian, Celtic, Aberdeen and Rangers have teams in the Scottish Women’s Premier League, experience in a number of countries has shown that whenever a professional men’s club runs into financial trouble, the women’s section is invariably one of the first things to go. And, although people such as SFA chief executive Stewart Regan have been notably supportive, women remain conspicuous by their absence from the senior ranks of governing bodies.

If women’s football is to keep on expanding, those three areas – media coverage, reliance on men’s clubs and the nature of governing bodies – need to be addressed. The first is the easiest to change and, despite some evidence to the contrary, is in fact already improving. There is still a severe imbalance in every newspaper and on almost every website between men’s and women’s sport, but the most influential media organisation in the land, the BBC, has already made significant changes in its approach.

That enlightened attitude may not be immediately apparent from some of Radio Scotland’s output. But there is now a serious challenge within the corporation to the presumption that football chat should be the preserve of some of the most conservative men in the country.

When it comes to being reliant on men’s clubs, women’s football in general will have to live with that risk while its income from sponsorship and broadcasting remains comparatively small. Until something close to economic parity is achieved, independent clubs such as Glasgow City here and Turbine Potsdam in Germany will remain vital examples of the need to keep at least a section of the women’s game free from male control.

Change in the profile of those in positions of power can be brought about more quickly. The current criticism of FA chairman Greg Dyke for appointing an all-white, all-male commission to investigate the performance of the England men’s team is just one indication that wider social change is now making itself felt at the heart of what, on both sides of the Border, is the national sport.

There is a place in this world for middle-aged white males. I’m one myself and do not want to be abolished any time soon. But that place is not necessarily at the top of every organisation in the land. The sooner Scottish football stops being run exclusively by people from a very narrow section of society, the more likely it is to become open to new ideas that may just help reinvigorate the game.

That change, and others, will happen. It’s only a question of when, and how quickly. To anyone who plans to resist it, the answer is simple: Don’t waste your breath. You’re on the wrong side of history.

If you have no interest in women’s football, no worries. It’s not compulsory. But why actively disparage it, in particular by comparing it unfavourably to the men’s game?

When Serena Williams won her 17th Grand Slam at the US Open last month, no-one with any sense claimed she was useless, just because scores of men could beat her at tennis. Similarly, when Paula Radcliffe set a world record for the marathon.

And when Ricky Burns became super-featherweight world champion, no-one with the slightest knowledge of boxing said he was no good because any number of heavyweights could pulverise him.

In other words, there is no point in assessing women’s football in relation to men’s. We judge the progress of a club by how well they do against other clubs. We judge the national team according to their results against other countries.

And we assess women’s football as a whole by comparing its present state with how it was a couple of years ago. Viewed in that light, whether in Scotland or internationally, it is clear that it is growing both in numbers and in quality. Getting better all the time: and nothing will prevent that progress from continuing.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.